Venezuela 'ends' bid to restore full US ties

[MADem]

63. Allied as in they've been paying VZ's bills for the last few years? Loaning them money to make

payroll and buy basic/goods and services?

That's not an "alliance." That is a business transaction. And China holds the paper, they can call the debt.

Don't even trot out the "you seem to" comments. There's no need to characterize me. You don't know me to save your life, so how can you say that you have "met with others like you on DU" -- that's just silliness.

VZ is in economic difficulty not because of "social ownership of natural resources" (and nothing wrong with that, so long as a country doesn't go back on their word after making agreements), they are in trouble because the "Boligarchs" have raped the country of its oil profit and stashed it in offshore banks for the personal enrichment of the "Friends and Family of Hugo." Let me pre-empt you and say I've no idea if the opposition would or wouldn't do the same if they got the chance, but the bottom line is this--thieves are running that country, keeping the bulk of the cash for themselves and throwing crumbs to the poor (but they are cake crumbs, so the poor are distracted) and they are running it straight into the ground. The economy is not diversified at all and the one thing they have--oil--is stuck in the ground because those assclowns are too busy spending money on crap and not spending anything on infrastructure and maintenance of the black-gold-goose that lays those golden eggs. They don't have refinery capacity, their fields are a mess. They aren't gittin' it done. They are very close to crisis for this reason, and China, or someone, is going to need to send in a shitload of people along with barrels of cash to fix that mess.

I'm not the one playing the "you seem to be" game, here...you are. So if you want to know about "ballistic" look at yourself--I'm not characterizing you with false assumptions like you repeatedly are doing to me.